Gender Parity in Local Power in Portugal: Gender Composition of Municipal Councils (2009–2025)

Composição por Género das Câmaras Municipais (2009-2025)

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first gender inequality has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing democracies. Despite some progress, inequality persists in the political sphere, being particularly evident at the local level.

In Portugal, this concern led to the approval of the Parity Law, which imposed a minimum representation of 40% of each sex on electoral lists for the election of representative collegiate political bodies. However, this legal framework does not guarantee effective balanced representation.

Within this context, this article analyses the gender representation of elected officials in the 308 Portuguese municipal councils over four electoral cycles (2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021), with the aim of tracing the evolution of women's participation in the municipalities' executive collegiate bodies and, thereby, assessing the actual effectiveness of the current legal parity regime.

The results reveal progress, albeit limited: between the term that began in 2009 and the one that ended in 2025, there was a positive change of only 7.39 percentage points, raising women's representation from 25.89% to 33.28%. This leads to the conclusion that, despite the current legal parity mechanism, women's representation remains below the minimum parity threshold of 40% stipulated therein.